Chicago Public Schools may shake up magnet schools with new policy

Plan could reduce number of spots for non-sibling, out-of-neighborhood applicants

December 14, 2009|By Azam Ahmed and Joe Germuska, TRIBUNE REPORTERS

The number of outside applicants being offered a seat would drop at nearly every Chicago magnet school next year under new admissions criteria to be voted on Wednesday, according to a Tribune analysis.

By giving greater priority to siblings of current students and applicants who live within 1 1/2 miles of each magnet school, the policy could reduce the offers extended to other applicants by about 14 percent overall.

FOR THE RECORD - This story contains corrected material, published Dec. 15, 2009.

In some schools, the reduction is far greater. At Drummond Elementary, where the acceptance rate hovers around 3 percent, offers to students outside the neighborhood would drop almost 55 percent. At Black Magnet on the South Side, where just 1 in 10 students is accepted, 32 percent of the offers would dry up.

Some observers say the policy will undermine the essence of magnets, which were created nearly 30 years ago to integrate schools in the nation's most segregated large city. By raising the number of students from the neighborhood who can attend, magnets once meant for all public school kids would increasingly become de facto neighborhood schools.

"It pretty much undermines the very purpose of what a magnet school was supposed to do: draw people on a voluntary basis ... to provide greater equity and diversity in that school," said Sumi Cho, a professor of racial theory at the DePaul University law school and a Drummond parent.

Using data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that detail the 2008 applications and offers for 38 elementary magnet schools, the Tribune calculated what would have happened if the new policy were in place.

In 70 percent of the schools examined, fewer students from outside the neighborhood would have been offered seats, the analysis shows.

The results offer a different picture from the one that district officials have pitched to the public.

The new policy comes in the wake of a federal court decision to scrap a 30-year-old court decree that forced the school district to racially integrate. Schools can no longer use the race of an individual student in admissions decisions because of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling. But officials say the new policy, which looks at socioeconomic factors, would retain the mix of students at these schools.

"We really believe that this plan is going to mirror what's happened in the past," said Abigayil Joseph, the head of the Office of Academic Enhancement, which oversees magnet schools. "We are very much in uncharted territory, which is why the policy going forward is a one-year policy. We're going to be doing another set of analyses on how this thing turned out."

Some parents applaud the new program, arguing in favor of sibling acceptance and the increased share of seats for the neighborhood. Many argue it's unduly burdensome for parents to drive their children to two schools and unfair to be denied access to the closest school.

"Having siblings in the school is the way to keep parents involved, and any way to keep parents involved is a good thing," said Sumaya Hoggard, local school council chair at Mayer Magnet in Lincoln Park.

But the Tribune analysis shows the new policy could transform some of the district's more vaunted programs into neighborhood schools, as the current enrollment of students admitted on racial grounds is replaced every year by more local children.

Consider Hawthorne Elementary: The school has a white population of more than 40 percent in a district that is less than 9 percent white. Nestled in the heart of the North Side's wealthy Lakeview neighborhood, that percentage will likely rise, given that the district can no longer impose racial quotas (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).

"As this neighborhood preference plays out over the years, the schools are going to get more and more like their neighborhood," said Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, an education nonprofit. "Pretty soon there are going to be no remaining open seats that are not filled by siblings or people from the neighborhood."

In truth, many of these schools have not been the bastions of integration they were meant to be.

At certain South Side magnet schools, such as Beasley and Black, the population is almost entirely African-American. Meanwhile, Wildwood Elementary on the Far North Side, which must accept every child within its neighborhood boundary, has a white population of more than 50 percent. Wildwood is an example of the handful of magnet schools that have special circumstances governing their admissions policies.

The bottom line is that for families of all races, the new policy would raise the barrier to entry for those who don't fit the proximity and sibling criteria, the data show.

The altered landscape has struck home for Danielle Willis, a product of two of the city's elite public schools.

Her son, Gabriel, 5, is applying to the venerable magnet schools, some of which admit fewer than 5 percent of applicants through their random lotteries.